Dead Man Walking

In Kpavio, Promo by Kpavio

“What do you do with a dead body?”

“I want you to think of a corpse laying in the street. It’s been brutalized beyond belief, you can barely recognize its face but you know by the clothes exactly who you’re looking at.”

“What do you do?”

“Do you sit in the streets and mourn them? Scream to the skies that they shouldn’t have been ripped from this cruel world so soon?”

“Or perhaps you stand up and tell yourself you’ll find his killer to bring him to justice?”

“At the end of the day, though, nothing you do will be able to fix what’s already been done to the body. The life left its eyes, the memory will begin to fade from your mind starting from that day.”

“The only course of action to take now, that makes sense, is to bury it.”

“Because if you leave a corpse in the road, then people will get sick, people will mourn, and no one will move on.”

“I’ve reaped many souls, but one question I don’t know the answer to myself is exactly what death feels like. Could you care to answer, Drewitt?”

“The Arcadian explorer turned dead man walking through its many levels and broken streets.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Like hot lead going between your eyes, splattering your brains on the dirt as the world turns to black?”

“Could you feel your dog mourning your passing? Or did everything cease to be? Did you even know you were gone?”

“Until you crawled out of that shallow grave you didn’t even realize what happened, did you? You were just another casualty sitting in the streets for everyone else to deal with.”

“But you stood back up and started walking again.”

“A dead body on two legs making his way through the streets confused and leaking puss.”

“The thing with a corpse is it needs to be dealt with before it becomes a problem. Before it begins to reek of decay and bleed into the waters. People who get too close to it will walk away sick, infected, or dead by exposure.”

“No matter how clean the body is, how little mess is being left behind, it’s only matter of time until it becomes an issue for Arcadia to need a solution for.”

“But thankfully for the citizens of this cruel little world, I’m the person willing to do what they are not.”

“Once we ascend to Olympus I’m going to do what has been needed for months, Drewitt. I’m going to take your festering corpse and bury it six feet under. Placed in a coffin and buried in in the ground where you belong.”

“Some may be too busy mourning you to do it.”

“Others could believe that you aren’t hurting anyone if they just let you lay in the streets.”

“But I know that if someone doesn’t do what needs to be done, then everyone will suffer.”

“A cruel world needs a cruel hero, Drewitt.”

“And that hero has to be me.”